how the gift was given
The role of Baron Von Imhoff
Imhoff’s Gift is named in honour of Baron Gustav Wilhelm von Imhoff, who was in the Cape in 1743 as Commissioner Extraordinaire of the Dutch East India Company, on his way to Batavia (modern Indonesia) to take up office as the newly appointed Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. (The spelling of his name varies considerably – Gustav or Gustaaf, Wilhelm or Willem, and von Imhoff or van Imhoff. The reason is that although he was born in Germany, he worked most of his life for the Dutch East India Company, so the German and Dutch spellings of his name tend to be used inter-changeably). Imhoff was born in 1705 in the north-western German town of Leer, the son of a nobleman, Baron Wilhelm Heinrich von Imhoff. He joined the Dutch East India Company [the ‘Vereenigde Ostindische Compagnie’, or ‘VOC’] in 1725, when he was 20 years old, and served them until his death in 1750 at the young age of 45.
During his time in the Cape, as a senior VOC official, he ordered the building of the refreshment station at Simons Bay to re-supply VOC ships that were now overwintering in that more sheltered harbour rather than risk the severe north-westerly gales that regularly battered Table Bay in winter. But although the ships were now much safer in Simons Bay, there was a major problem in getting the supplies needed to revictual them. The supplies had to come from Cape Town, which was a two-day wagon-trek each way, and this was a source of great delay, inconvenience and frustration.
The Baron and the Lady-farmer
Enter Christina Russouw (born 1698), daughter of Abraham Diemer who owned the famous wine farm ‘Diemersdal’ in the Tygerberg area, and widow of a successful farmer, Frederik Russouw (sometimes spelt Rousseau) (b. 1689), who owned several parcels of land including a farm named ‘Zwaanswyk aan de Steenberg’ which is today the well-known wine- and golf estate, ‘Steenberg’.
Christina was an enterprising and energetic woman who had inherited Frederik’s farms on his death (sometime between 1731 and 1735, but actual date unknown), including the farm ‘Zwaansweide’ in the Noordhoek area. Seeing the opportunity presented by the predicament facing the VOC, she took the the initiative and began supplying vegetables and other produce to the VOC ships from her farm. Her efforts so impressed Commissioner von Imhoff that he awarded her a grant of land on condition that she use it to grow fresh produce to supply to the VOC ships at fixed prices. (as an irrelevant footnote, at least one source consulted describes Christina as von Imhoff’s ‘mistress’!) The area granted to her subsequently became known as ‘Imhoff’s Gift’ in his honour, and it included the land on which the modern-day residential suburbs of Kommetjie, Ocean View, Bluewater Estate and Imhoff’s Gift now stand, as well, of course, as the remaining portion of the farm itself which still operates as a family farm owned by the van der Horst family, with its ever-popular commercial centre.
In 1765 Christina built a homestead on the farm, parts of which still stand today, although in much altered form after the house was almost totally destroyed by fire in 1958. Today the rebuilt farmhouse hosts the Bluewater Cafe on Imhoff Farm, where one can still enjoy the warm and homely sight of two of the original fireplaces, one with its welcoming blue-and-white Delft tile surround, and a preserved portion of one of the the original internal walls neatly framed to show how it was originally built.
The fresh produce for the VOC ships was grown on a part of the farm that came to be known as ‘Kompagniestuin’ (‘Company’s Garden’). This name, too, may soon be resurrected and commemorated as the proposed name for another planned residential development opposite Imhoff’s Gift along Kommetjie Main Road.
IMHOFF"S GIFT BECOMES A RESIDENTIAL SUBURB
The present residential township of Imhoff’s Gift was established in 1993, when one of the remaining portions (Erf 2732) of Imhoff Farm, owned by the van der Horst family since 1912, was subdivided.
The Imhoff’s Gift Home Owners’ Association came into being at that time, with a formally drafted constitution and a building design manual to control the style of buildings to be built on the estate, with “Cape Vernacular” being chosen as the governing architectural style for the development of the estate. The design manual also laid down guidelines for plantings in individual gardens and in the open spaces, to strike a sensitive balance between exotic and indigenous plants, especially in view of the fact that Imhoff’s Gift lies within the boundaries of a nature reserve – Table Mountain National Park.
It also falls in the Coastal Lowland Fynbos biome which is heavily threatened by urban development and invasion by alien plants – especially Australian Acacias (Port Jackson and ‘Rooikrans’ wattles). A report in the 1980s by the late Prof. John Grindley of the University of Cape Town noted that the Coastal Lowland Fynbos was “. . . the most seriously neglected part of the entire Fynbos Biome”. The Fynbos Biome is, of course, an important part of the internationally famous, species-rich Cape Floral Kingdom, with at least 8700 species recorded, many of which (68%) occur only here and nowhere else. The Table Mountain National Park is now a World Heritage Site managed by SANPARKS (https://www.sanparks.org/)
